Should this be posted here? …. love him or hate him … Peter and Phil are still friends.

It looks like the other guys in Genesis will have to give Peter Gabriel a call if they want to do any future reunion tours: Phil Collins has announced that he is retiring from music. The 57-year-old Englishman told the Times that, although he will probably continue to write music, he has no plans to record or perform live in the future.
Collins started drumming on a toy kit at the age of five. After a stint as a child actor, he rose to fame as a member of the progressive-rock band Genesis. He started as the band’s drummer, but took over as the singer when Gabriel left. Collins also had a hugely successful run as a solo artist.
To many of his fans, Collins’s retirement is not news: he brought his solo career to a close with a farewell tour in 2005 (documented in a film, The Long Goodnight, which was released on DVD last year). However, his Genesis bandmates convinced him to rejoin them for a successful reunion tour last summer.

http://www.straight.com/article-143701/phil-collins-announces-his-retirement

Peter Gabriel wants to help organize entertainment options
The tech-savvy musician is launching a website that helps viewers sift through recommendations.
By Geoff Boucher
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 15, 2008

PETER GABRIEL has always roamed the sector between art and science. “My father was an electrical engineer,” the English musician said, “and while I didn’t inherit his talent for invention, I did pick up a love of innovation, a passion for finding the next.”

The search for next has taken Gabriel into a dizzying array of directions (his pioneering CD-ROM “Xplora1” in 1995, for instance, framed many of the Digital Age possibilities for musicians), but right now he is most excited about an endeavor that narrows the number of ideas: The Filter.

“We’ve all sat there at the computer with muscle fatigue in our thumbs and faced with so much information without focus,” said Gabriel, a partner in the new website. “Getting the good stuff without the grief, that is the dream. And I’m not talking just about music, I mean everything. Not just a disc jockey, but a life jockey.”

TheFilter.com has a beta launch today and goes public in May to join a wide and churning group of recommendation engines. (Many track only music preferences; the Filter aspires to add film to the mix.)

Clearly, many people realize that the Internet can create a “tyranny of too much choice,” as the Filter’s chief executive officer, David Maher Roberts, puts it. The Filter combines purchase, consumption and browsing data (it tracks accounts on Netflix, Flixster, etc.) to create an experience map. The next level, Gabriel said, will be to meld your profile with someone else’s.

“If you have a friend who knows more about reggae than you, or there’s a critic or a composer who intrigues you, you can mash-up your profiles. That’s where we want to go. That’s where a lot of people would like to go.”

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/interactive/la-et-filterapr15,1,3508364.story

March 10th, 2008
Sony BMG Signs with Ad-Supported Music Service We7

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
What’s up with Sony BMG? Of late, they seem to be open to trying new ideas which, based on their rootkit-like DRM and other issues in the past, seem out of character. First they sign a deal with Amazon MP3 for all DRM-free music, and now this!
Sony’s new deal is with We7, an ad-supported music streaming / download service based in the U.K., with 100k subscribers and over 2m downloads as of February 2008. Sony BMG thus becomes the first major label to sign with We7, which was founded in April 2007. Musician Peter Gabriel is one of its founders.
The We7 service works by dynamically ‘grafting’ ads onto the front of music tracks and albums based on a user’s demographics such as location, age, gender.
According to the press release:
From the end of April, We7’s users will be able to stream music, on demand and for free with a short audio advert before each track, from the extensive Sony BMG catalogue. The label will also make available to stream on demand new releases from its current roster of artists. Initially the streaming service will only be available to existing registered users of We7, before it is rolled out to new subscribers.
Commenting on the announcement, Ged Doherty, Chairman of Sony BMG in the UK and Ireland, said “We are in the business of embracing a multitude of new ways our music can reach audiences. Our deal with We7 is an important step forward in offering fans greater flexibility in how they consume music.”
Steve Purdham, CEO of We7, commented “Today marks a significant leap forward for We7 and the industry as a whole, as Sony BMG lead the way in embracing the on demand streaming model for the benefit of music fans, artists and advertisers alike.”
Peter Gabriel, the musician and founder of We7, added “The digital revolution has provided exciting and extraordinary opportunities in the music business, even though it has been largely written off by many. We7 is a model that will supply free music to the consumer and still provide a stream of revenue to musicians and content owners. We are delighted that Sony BMG are exploring this new world, and are the first forward thinking major to come on board with us.”
As indicated above, initial access to Sony BMG music will be limited, but it’s unclear what “existing registered users” means. Does it mean only those already signed up as of this press release, or does it include those who sign up before the Sony BMG music goes live in April? I sent an email to We7 to find out.
It should also be noted that Sony BMG is only supplying tracks for the streaming part of We7’s service, not the download portion, although Doherty did not rule out a future deal including downloads. He also said that Sony BMG was in talks with other such ad-supported music services – interesting.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/5490

English musician Peter Gabriel, mentions in his January update video that he is working on music for WALL•E.

We are just working musically, for a song on a Pixar film, um, Andrew Stanton that directed Finding Nemo, um asked, in fact in 2005 originally I think ah, if I’d get involved with this project, which is, which is now nearly finished, called WALL•E. And it’s about a robot that is um, ah, left clearing up all the garbage and mess on earth, while the human inhabitants um are up in space. And ah, I think he’d done some of the research with NASA experts who explained that as we spend more and more time up in space, um our bones disintergrate, they uh, they don’t do well in zero gravity. Ah and so he has portrayed them as these sort of fat blobs floating around in armchairs. Anyway, it’s very..a lot of cool ideas, ah, and some of it I think is a response to Kubrick’s 2001 which made a huge impression on me when I was 17 when I first saw..they where also saying I think, some of the NASA guys that Kubrick was right on a lot of things….

What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? Academy Award-winning writer-director Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”) and the inventive storytellers and technical geniuses at Pixar Animation Studios (“The Incredibles,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille”) transport moviegoers to a galaxy not so very far away for a new computer-animated cosmic comedy about a determined robot named WALL*E. After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL*E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL*E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet’s future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home). Meanwhile, WALL*E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen. Joining WALL*E on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future, is a hilarious cast of characters including a pet cockroach, and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots.

A Short Funny

Teasers